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The Final Problem

It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the
last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by
which my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was distinguished. In an
incoherent and. as I deeply feel, an entirely inadequate fashion, I
have endeavoured to give some account of my strange experiences
in his company from the chance which first brought us together
at the period of the "Study in Scarlet," up to the time of his
interference in the matter of the "Naval Treaty" -- an interfer-
ence which had the unquestionable effect of preventing a serious
international complication. It was my intention to have stopped
there, and to have said nothing of that event which has created a
void in my life which the lapse of two years has done little to
fill. My hand has been forced, however, by the recent letters in
which Colonel James Moriarty defends the memory of his brother,
and I have no choice but to lay the facts before the public exactly
as they occurred. I alone know the absolute truth of the matter,
and I am satisfied that the time has come when no good purpose
is to be served by its suppression. As far as I know, there have
been only three accounts in the public press: that in the Journal
de Geneve on May 6th, 1891, the Reuter's dispatch in the
English papers on May 7th, and finally the recent letters to
which I have alluded. Of these the first and second were ex-
tremely condensed, while the last is, as I shall now show, an
absolute perversion of the facts. It lies with me to tell for the first
time what really took place between Professor Moriarty and Mr.

Sherlock Holmes.

It may be remembered that after my marriage, and my subse-
quent start in private practice, the very intimate relations which
had existed between Holmes and myself became to some extent
modified. He still came to me from time to time when he desired
a companion in his investigations, but these occasions grew more
and more seldom, until I find that in the year 1890 there were
only three cases of which I retain any record. During the winter
of that year and the early spring of 1891, I saw in the papers that
he had been engaged by the French government upon a matter of
supreme importance, and I received two notes from Holmes,
dated from Narbonne and from Nimes, from which I gathered
that his stay in France was likely to be a long one. It was with
some surprise, therefore, that I saw him walk into my consulting-
room upon the evening of April 24th. It struck me that he was
looking even paler and thinner than usual.

"Yes, I have been using myself up rather too freely," he
remarked, in answer to my look rather than to my words; "I
have been a little pressed of late. Have you any objection to my
closing your shutters?"

The only light in the room came from the lamp upon the table
at which I had been reading. Holmes edged his way round the
wall, and, flinging the shutters together, he bolted them securely.

"You are afraid of something?" I asked.

"Well, I am."

"Of what?"

"Of air-guns."

"My dear Holmes, what do you mean?"

"I think that you know me well enough. Watson. to under-
stand that I am by no means a nervous man. At the same time, it
is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger
when it is close upon you. Might I trouble you for a match?" He
drew in the smoke of his cigarette as if the soothing influence
was grateful to him.

"I must apologize for calling so late," said he, "and I must
further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave
your house presently by scrambling over your back garden wall."

"But what does it all mean?" I asked.

He held out his hand, and I saw in the light of the lamp that
two of his knuckles were burst and bleeding.

"It's not an airy nothing, you see," said he. smiling. "On the
contrary, it is solid enough for a man to break his hand over. Is
Mrs. Watson in?"

"She is away upon a visit."

"Indeed! You are alone?"

"Quite."

"Then it makes it the easier for me to propose that you should
come away with me for a week to the Continent."

"Where?"

"Oh, anywhere. It's all the same to me."

There was something very strange in all this. It was not
Holmes's nature to take an aimless holiday, and something
about his pale, worn face told me that his nerves were at their
highest tension. He saw the question in my eyes, and, putting his
finger-tips together and his elbows upon his knees, he explained
the situation.

"You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?" said
he.

"Never."

"Ay, there's the genius and the wonder of the thing!" he
cried. "The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him.

That's what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime. I tell
you Watson, in all seriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I
could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had
reached its summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some
more placid line in life. Between ourselves, the recent cases in
which I have been of assistance to the royal family of Scandina-
via, and to the French republic, have left me in such a position
that I could continue to live in the quiet fashion which is most
congenial to me, and to concentrate my attention upon my
chemical researches. But I could not rest. Watson, I could not sit
quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as Professor
Moriarty were walking the streets of London unchallenged."

"What has he done, then?"

"His career has been an extraordinary one. He is a man of
good birth and excellent education. endowed by nature with a
phenomenal mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he
wrote a treatise upon the binomial theorem, which has had a
European vogue. On the strength of it he won the mathematical
chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appear-
ances, a most brilliant career before him. But the man had
hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal
strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was
increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraor-
dinary mental powers. Dark rumours gathered round him in the
university town, and eventually he was compelled to resign his
chair and to come down to London, where he set up as an army
coach. So much is known to the world, but what I am telling you
now is what I have myself discovered.

"As you are aware, Watson, there is no one who knows the
higher criminal world of London so well as I do. For years past I
have continually been conscious of some power behind the male-
factor, some deep organizing power which forever stands in the
way of the law, and throws its shield over the wrong-doer. Again
and again in cases of the most varying sorts -- forgery cases,
robberies, murders -- I have felt the presence of this force, and I
have deduced its action in many of those undiscovered crimes in
which I have not been personally consulted. For years I have
endeavoured to break through the veil which shrouded it, and at
last the time came when l seized my thread and followed it, until
it led me. after a thousand cunning windings, to ex-Professor
Moriarty, of mathematical celebrity.

"He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of
half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great
city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a
brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the
centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he
knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself.

He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly
organized. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted,
we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed -- the
word is passed to the professor, the matter is organized and
carried out. The agent may be caught. In that case money is
found for his bail or his detence. But the central power which
uses the agent is never caught -- never so much as suspected.

This was the organization which I deduced, Watson, and which I
devoted my whole energy to exposing and breaking up.

"But the professor was fenced round with safeguards so cun-
ningly devised that, do what I would, it seemed impossible to get
evidence which would convict in a court of law. You know my
powers, my dear Watson, and yet at the end of three months I
was forced to confess that I had at last met an antagonist who
was my intellectual equal. My horror at his crimes was lost in
my admiration at his skill. But at last he made a trip -- only a
little, little trip but it was more than he could afford, when I
was so close upon him. I had my chance, and, starting from that
point, I have woven my net round him until now it is all ready to
close. In three days -- that is to say, on Monday next -- matters
will be ripe, and the professor, with all the principal members of
his gang, will be in the hands of the police. Then will come the
greatest criminal trial of the century, the clearing up of over forty
mysteries, and the rope for all of them; but if we move at all
prematurely, you understand, they may slip out of our hands
even at the last moment.

"Now, if I could have done this without the knowledge of
Professor Moriarty, all would have been well. But he was too
wily for that. He saw every step which I took to draw my toils
round him. Again and again he strove to break away, but I as
often headed him off. I tell you, my friend, that if a detailed
account of that silent contest could be written, it would take its
place as the most brilliant bit of thrust-and-parry work in the
history of detection. Never have I risen to such a height, and
never have I been so hard pressed by an opponent. He cut deep,
and yet I just undercut him. This morning the last steps were
taken, and three days only were wanted to complete the busi-
ness. I was sitting in my room thinking the matter over when the
door opened and Professor Moriarty stood before me.

"My nerves are fairly proof, Watson, but I must confess to a
start when I saw the very man who had been so much in my
thoughts standing there on my threshold. His appearance was
quite familiar to me. He is extremely tall and thin, his forehead
domes out in a white curve, and his two eyes are deeply sunken
in his head. He is clean-shaven, pale, and ascetic-looking, re-
taining something of the professor in his features. His shoulders
are rounded from much study, and his face protrudes forward
and is forever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously
reptilian fashion. He peered at me with great curiosity in his
puckered eyes.

" 'You have less frontal development than I should have
expected,' said he at last. 'It is a dangerous habit to finger
loaded firearms in the pocket of one's dressing-gown.'
"The fact is that upon his entrance I had instantly recognized
the extreme personal danger in which I lay. The only conceiv-
able escape for him lay in silencing my tongue. In an instant I
had slipped the revolver from the drawer into my pocket and was
covering him through the cloth. At his remark I drew the weapon
out and laid it cocked upon the table. He still smiled and
blinked, but there was something about his eyes which made me
feel very glad that I had it there.

" 'You evidently don't know me,' said he.

" 'On the contrary,' I answered, 'I think it is fairly evident
that I do. Pray take a chair. I can spare you five minutes if you
have anything to say.'
" 'All that I have to say has already crossed your mind,' said
he.

" 'Then possibly my answer has crossed yours,' I replied.

" 'You stand fast?'
" 'Absolutely. '
"He clapped his hand into his pocket, and I raised the pistol
from the table. But he merely drew out a memorandum-book in
which he had scribbled some dates.

" 'You crossed my path on the fourth of January,' said he.

'On the twenty-third you incommoded me; by the middle of
February I was seriously inconvenienced by you; at the end of
March I was absolutely hampered in my plans; and now, at the
close of April, I find myself placed in such a position through
your continual persecution that I am in positive danger of losing
my liberty. The situation is becoming an impossible one.'
" 'Have you any suggestion to make?' I asked.

" 'You must drop it, Mr. Holmes,' said he, swaying his face
about. 'You really must, you know.'
" 'After Monday,' said I.

" 'Tut, tut!' said he. 'I am quite sure that a man of your
intelligence will see that there can be but one outcome to this
affair. It is necessary that you should withdraw. You have
worked things in such a fashion that we have only one resource
left. It has been an intellectual treat to me to see the way in
which you have grappled with this affair, and I say, unaffect-
edly, that it would be a grief to me to be forced to take any
extreme measure. You smile, sir, but I assure you that it really
would.

" 'Danger is part of my trade,' I remarked.

" 'This is not danger,' said he. 'It is inevitable destruction.

You stand in the way not merely of an individual but of a mighty
organization, the full extent of which you, with all your clever-
ness, have been unable to realize. You must stand clear, Mr.

Holmes, or be trodden under foot.'
" 'I am afraid,' said I, rising, 'that in the pleasure of this
conversation I am neglecting business of importance which awaits
me elsewhere.'
"He rose also and looked at me in silence, shaking his head
sadly.

" 'Well, well,' said he at last. 'It seems a pity, but I have
done what I could. I know every move of your game. You can
do nothing before Monday. It has been a duel between you and
me, Mr. Holmes. You hope to place me in the dock. I tell you
that I will never stand in the dock. You hope to beat me. I tell
you that you will never beat me. If you are clever enough to
bring destruction upon me, rest assured that I shall do as much to
you.'
" 'You have paid me several compliments, Mr. Moriarty,'
said I. 'Let me pay you one in return when I say that if I were
assured of the former eventuality I would, in the interests of the
public, cheerfully accept the latter.'
" 'I can promise you the one, but not the other,' he snarled,
and so turned his rounded back upon me and went peering and
blinking out of the room.

"That was my singular intervie with Professor Moriarty. I
confess that it left an unpleasant effect upon my mind. His soft,
precise fashion of speech leaves a conviction of sincerity which a
mere bully could not produce. Of course, you will say: 'Why not
take police precautions against him?' The reason is that I am
well convinced that it is from his agents the blow would fall. I
have the best of proofs that it would be so."

"You have already been assaulted?"

"My dear Watson, Professor Moriarty is not a man who lets
the grass grow under his feet. I went out about midday to
transact some business in Oxford Street. As I passed the corner
which leads from Bentinck Street on to the Welbeck Street
crossing a two-horse van furiously driven whizzed round and
was on me like a flash. I sprang for the foot-path and saved
myself by the fraction of a second. The van dashed round by
Marylebone Lane and was gone in an instant. I kept to the
pavement after that, Watson, but as I walked down Vere Street a
brick came down from the roof of one of the houses and was
shattered to fragments at my feet. I called the police and had the
place examined. There were slates and bricks piled up on the
roof preparatory to some repairs, and they would have me be-
lieve that the wind had toppled over one of these. Of course I
knew better, but I could prove nothing. I took a cab after that
and reached my brother's rooms in Pall Mall, where I spent the
day. Now I have come round to you, and on my way I was
attacked by a rough with a bludgeon. I knocked him down, and
the police have him in custody; but I can tell you with the most
absolute confidence that no possible connection will ever be
traced between the gentleman upon whose front teeth I have
barked my knuckles and the retiring mathematical coach, who is,
I daresay, working out problems upon a black-board ten miles
away. You will not wonder, Watson, that my first act on enter-
ing your rooms was to close your shutters, and that I have been
compelled to ask your permission to leave the house by some
less conspicuous exit than the front door."

I had often admired my friend's courage, but never more than
now, as he sat quietly checking off a series of incidents which
must have combined to make up a day of horror.

"You will spend the night here?" I said.

"No, my friend, you might find me a dangerous guest. I have
my plans laid, and all will be well. Matters have gone so far now
that they can move without my help as far as the arrest goes,
though my presence is necessary for a conviction. It is obvious,
therefore, that I cannot do better than get away for the few days
which remain before the police are at liberty to act. It would be a
great pleasure to me, therefore, if you could come on to the
Continent with me."

"The practice is quiet," said I, "and I have an accommodat-
ing neighbour. I should be glad to come."

"And to start to-morrow morning?"

"If necessary."

"Oh, yes, it is most necessary. Then these are your instruc-
tions, and I beg, my dear Watson, that you will obey them to the
letter, for you are now playing a double-handed game with me
against the cleverest rogue and the most powerful syndicate of
criminals in Europe. Now listen! You will dispatch whatever
luggage you intend to take by a trusty messenger unaddressed to
Victoria to-night. In the morning you will send for a hansom,
desiring your man to take neither the first nor the second which
may present itself. Into this hansom you will jump, and you will
drive to the Strand end of the Lowther Arcade, handing the
address to the cabman upon a slip of paper, with a request that
he will not throw it away. Have your fare ready, and the instant
that your cab stops, dash through the Arcade, timing yourself to
reach the other side at a quarter-past nine. You will find a small
brougham waiting close to the curb, driven by a fellow with a
heavy black cloak tipped at the collar with red. Into this you will
step, and you will reach Victoria in time for the Continental
express."

"Where shall I meet you?"

"At the station. The second first-class carriage from the front
will be reserved for us."

"The carriage is our rendezvous, then?"

"Yes."

It was in vain that I asked Holmes to remain for the evening.

It was evident to me that he thought he might bring trouble to the
roof he was under, and that that was the motive which impelled
him to go. With a few hurried words as to our plans for the
morrow he rose and came out with me into the garden, clamber-
ing over the wall which leads into Mortimer Street, and immedi-
ately whistling for a hansom, in which I heard him drive away.